Last week I bought my new Lumia 930 (black) and received it the next day. To my surprise I received an Albanian Country Variant. And when I started up my phone I was greeted in Russian or Albanian – sorry, I do not know the diference. Supplier Phoneshop.nl apparently does not deliver Dutch phones, eventhough it is a Dutch company and I am a Dutch citizen. After some fiddling around (thx to BING and Google translate) I managed to reset it.

My wife and I are avid campers. We spend at least 6 weeks a year in various campgrounds in Europe and The United States. Our preferred way of camping is with a tent and we like to stay in ‘rural’ campsites. In the USA that means campground in national and state parks, in Europe we avoid the big campsites and look for smaller privately owned sites.

We have a small tent that has room for three, so we can fit 2 beds and our luggage easily. Up until last year we slept on self-inflatables and that worked out fine until I noticed to get some trouble with my lower back (I am 51 years old). It would hurt when I got up in the morning and immediately start hurting again when we went back to bed on the 2nd or 3rd day.

So I started looking for alternatives and came across the Thermarest LuxuryLite Cot. More specifically the extra-large variant since I am quite large (193 cm) and because this version is also extra wide, it would allow me to sleep on my side, which is my preferred position.

Now, you need to know that this cot is expensive! I ordered it at CAMPZ.NL and the price-tag was over 225 euro’s – which is a lot, but it came with a 100 day return guarantee, so I would be able to test it thoroughly.

Did it work? The answer is wholeheartedly ‘Yes’ – I used the cot during a 4 week camping trip and spend almost 24 nights on this bed (other nights were spend in a hotel for the necessary showers and laundry facilities) – in over 6 different campsites.

Now it would be strange if I would say that not spending that time in my own bed did not affect me, but overall I slept great and had no back pain to speak of.

The cot consists of a sturdy cloth, 2 foldable sticks that slide into the long side and a set of smaller sticks and ‘feet’ that allow you to build the cot. It is almost impossible to explain in text, so I refer to the YouTube video for an explanation how to set this thing up ( http://youtu.be/orRtuiTgQ40 )

The cot comes in a small bag, that holds all of the components easily and the complete package is surprisingly light (less than 2 kg). Setting up takes some effort and strength in your upper arms.

After the first week I decided to change the way that the struts and feet are located – I used to evenly spread them across the length of the bed, but I discovered that putting 2 close together to support my head and neck, leave a bigger gap and then put in the rest (I suggest you look at the video, it will make more sense than my textual description here), was a better setup.

After 6 weeks the bed is still in perfect condition, but I do have some concerns about the holes in the cloth where you fix the ‘feet’; due to the tension that is put on the holes, I expect that this is an area that will suffer from the setup process. Also I noticed that this is not a very sturdy bed, getting in and out of it needs to be done with some care – you can absolutely forget to do anything else then sleep in this bed.

All in all I am happy with my purchase and hope we can enjoy camping for a long time.

Platforms, or ecosystems, are the virtual malls of the (near) future. We have the Google, Apple and Microsoft platform – although one could argue that these three are already surpassed by the likes of Facebook and Amazon, who put the big three in the (undesired) corner of ‘technology providers’.

Let me explain; a mall is a location where different vendors and providers come together and each contributes to the overall experience of the customer, while retaining their own business model. Some malls put this under 1 brand, creating a store-in-store concept, while others are more like traditional markets where farmers used to come together to sell their produce.

“The connected train is the monetization of high bandwidth Internet on a moving train where data and transactions are facilitated via a platform.

… to the platform provider(s), it’s the ability to harvest and sell passenger data and facilitate business transactions.”

Bringing technology into places that previously had almost no technology and using that technology to specifically address the circumstances of the consumer, client, traveler, patient, student, or whatever other role or identity people will take, is a great opportunity to both providers and consumers of services.

Before going into the specific value of such a ‘Connected Train’ platform, the authors address the necessary aspects that need to be understood before a platform can be instantiated:

What is the value chain?

Who are the groups that interact at the platform?

What is the role of the technology, what does it make possible?

How does the platform make money?

How will it work?

The authors treat each question, but go a little deeper when looking at the necessary technology; mainly I presume because this has been the biggest bottleneck so far in creating this platform. New developments in network technology and continuous improvement in available bandwidth are also expected.

“In 2018 the day–‐to–‐day technology of passengers will be very different. We can expect to see mass adoption of wearable computing, the Internet of Things, IPv6 and heads–‐up display technology (Google glasses). All of these new usages of the Internet will consume considerable bandwidth. Assuming that Moore’s law applies in order to meet passengers’ demands the connected train must offer 12 Mb/s to each passenger.”

Obviously, when such a platform is finally available many parties will be able to participate and some examples are explained in the paper. Next to looking at movies, order a meal or make an advanced restaurant reservation, I found the possible interaction with train staff most interesting.

Because of the platform nature, for the staff, the passengers are no longer anonymous travelers, but can be addressed as returning customers or passengers with special needs. Information can become tailored and customer remarks (complaints?) can be dealt with much quicker and on a personal basis.

“This is also an opportunity to upsell products that fit into the TOC service system such as parking or concession. There is an opportunity to tell stations about trains which are overcrowded before they arrive. This gives passengers the knowledge on which to base a decision as to whether to get on this train or wait for the next one.”

It is clear that still some big technology challenges need to be overcome and also aspects of privacy and pricing structures need to be addressed. But it is becoming clear that special purpose or special location platforms are a great way to bundle a wide experience of services on a technology foundation. It allows for collaboration between vendors, create added value for the platform provider and great benefits for its users.

And, after reading the whitepaper, it is obvious that platforms and trains are made for each other.

Imagine you have an automatically and real-time updated agenda – it continuously adapts your schedule to meetings taking longer, predicts and updates in real-time your travel-time to the next meetings and will adapt your schedule because it ‘knows’ that typically any meeting with your best client always takes 30 minutes longer than you originally plan it for.

A proof of concept conducted by the Atos Scientific Community looked at this aspect of predictability and took the data of the traffic in the city of Berlin to see if it was possible to do real time traffic forecasting (RTTF). The result is in a recently published white paper.

“RTTF enables a prediction (within 1 minute) of sensor data streams for the immediate future (up to four hours) and provides traffic condition classification for the upcoming time period based on the forecasted data.”

“The forecast provides a suitable time span for proactively managing upcoming incidents even before they appear.”

The team took a radical different approach to the challenges of today’s traffic management. Instead of proposing another reactive traffic management IT system with some smart analytics, the team targeted successfully a proactive traffic management approach which provides analytics solutions to predict critical events in advance before they appear. Using historic data and artificial neuron network technology, predictions are created for the intermediate future and utilized to determine the traffic status of the upcoming next four hours. Based on that information, actions can be taken proactively to mitigate or avoid future upcoming events. Utilizing the software and bringing in data scientists with an understanding of the context was the next step. This helped in defining the right parameters and a pattern based strategy (PBS) in place.

“Being able to identify patterns out of the existing data, model them into patterns and come up with a system that can provide reliable predictions is a remarkable achievement in itself, but the true value of PBS is being able to apply such capabilities to strategy definition and decision making.”

Working with the subject matter experts the team identified multiple models that were then consequently implemented in the software. The models are important, they avoid that you are trapped into simplification; when a car is driving slowly, it can be because of a traffic jam, but it can also be an older person driving more carefully.

By introducing the concept of ‘flow’ – the number of vehicles passing a sensor each hour – the team could identify 4 different states, which were in themselves also parameterized by looking at road capacity, speed limits, etc. This information is then fed into a look-up table based complex event processing engine in order to predict, within 1 minute, the traffic situation at given locations.

Because in real-life the historic data is continuously refreshed with the actual events of the past time, the system will be able to predict in real-time the situation on the road.

The proof of concept clearly showed that a self-learning system, combined with a complex event processing unit and the help of some subject matter expert data scientist can accurately predict the future – the white paper shows this in some great details.

“Real Time Traffic Forecasting is an excellent example of how data sources and identified patterns can be exploited to gain insights and to develop proactive strategies to deal with upcoming events and incidents. It enables a short term view into the future which is long enough to act on predicted incidents rather than react on occurring ones”

For me this proof of concept shows the benefits of data analytics in everyday life, and I am looking forward to this future.

There are 3 reasons I never go shopping without my smart phone; first I need to be able to compare the price of what is on sale with the price I would pay elsewhere, secondly, I like to see a review of the product on-line and thirdly I need to be able to call my wife when I am in doubt about what kind of groceries, or some other unknown item written on her shopping list (female hygiene products are always challenging for me).

“The shopping experience has suffered a dramatic change over the last decades. Offers are larger and more diversified than ever, globalization is a reality and e-commerce is growing exponentially. Buyers are more demanding, discerning and sophisticated while the traditional selling models are not good enough to secure a sustainable sales flow.”

This change in shopping, fueled by mobile technologies and a much deeper understanding of the customers behaviors and demands is the scope of a white paper download, called “The Future of In-Store Shopping”.

Physical shopkeepers, as explained in the paper, are increasingly under pressure to compete with the e-commerce world in order to provide an experience that has the same convenience of shopping on-line while at the same time offer the intimacy and customer satisfaction of getting to touch and discuss a product.

“The answer lies in putting the customer at the center of the value chain through an enhanced shopping experience. Whenever customers interact with the commerce, a new opportunity arises to know them better and offer a more personalized service, which could extend up to negotiating prices on a one-to-one basis.”

New shopping models will be needed to capture the client and bring the value of being in the shop, while at the same time the convenience of electronic payment and delivery is combined with the physical shop experience. Possible scenario’s include personalization but also increase the experience through show casing of product ranges and providing expert support during the decision making process.

The reason for being in a store can be further enhanced by making it part of a full end-to-end experience that can even start before you go into the shop. Something we used to do by sending around leaflets of this week’s offerings, but can now become a much more sophisticated and personal experience through data analytics of previous purchases or engaging the customer in communities – this ‘value-flow’, that can even include a post-shopping experience, is explained in detail and allows you to understand how you can set this up yourself.

“The better the retailers take care after a purchase, considering it the ‘purchase before the next purchase’, the more likely they are to have won happy and frequent customers.”

Technology will support this change. New payment methods, using mobile devices (we have talked about this before in my blogs and a white paper dedicated to mobile payments is also available) are increasingly available. But other technologies such as geo-location and in-store routing allow consumers to find stores and even navigate to specific locations inside the store. Big Data Analytics and all types of product identification through smart labelling, NFC or bar codes will help us track both the consumer and the products inside the store and beyond. Better and ‘always-on’ connectivity will support high enough bandwidth to enrich the physical product with lots of additional (meta-) data to give the customer even more information.

“Initially consumers will start using basic functionalities (find a store, make a shopping list, get product information, etc.) and once they feel confident and see the value, they will access more complex functionalities (make a shopping basket, self-checkout, mobile payment, cloud tickets, etc.). It is important that all these functions are easy to use and they are designed with the consumer at the center, hiding the complexity of the technologies being used (NFC, image recognition, indoor location, etc.)”

And when we look further in the future we will see possibilities for consumers to get access to the full product life cycle – where was this chair made, what is the origin of this coffee, what are the ingredients of this pizza? The full ecological footprint will be available regarding the actual product you are touching and putting in your basket. On top of that, using augmented reality the shop can adapt itself to your mood, informing the staff that you are open for suggestions or want to be left alone.

“Ultimately, what will make stores interesting in the future is the same thing that makes them interesting today: the physical experience of being there, talking to real people who know their products, touching such products and the unbeatable joy at leaving the store with the product in your hands.”

The paper gives you a comprehensive overview and is a good starting point to understand how customer expectations, technology and the way retailers like to organize their physical business comes together. And this is not far away in the future as I experienced recently when my favorite on-line retailer just now opened a physical store in my home town – interestingly the location of the store was the result of asking their on-line customers to find the best spot for them. I’m sure they saved a lot of money because they did not need to hire a specialist, locating the perfect location was outsourced to their customers – in my book, that is clever thinking.